Principles of cookery

enable us to decide whether a recipe is reliable. In butter cakes there is usually less butter than sugar, and less sugar than flour. When baking powder is used less is required than would be necessary for a dough where there are no eggs. Thus two even teaspoonfuls of baking powder is enough for three cups of flour for a cake in which three or four eggs are use. Some cooks use from one to two teaspoons of baking powder for each cup of flour in all cases, forgetting that the eggs alone would make a cake quite light. When there is an excess of baking powder, the cake is liable to be coarse grained and will dry quickly. Dutch apple cake and cottage pudding are similar to the common muffin mixture in the proportions of flour, liquid, etc., but are made richer by increasing the quantity of fat and sugar. The ordinary doughnut mixture is not unlike a cottage pudding dough, with the addition of flour to make it stiff enough to roll easily. Or it is similar to the quick biscuit dough with the addition of sugar, egg, and spice. Because doughnuts are cooked in fat, less shortening is required than for most stiff doughs. Cooky doughs are more like pastry with the addition of sugar, spice, and egg, and the same care should be given to keeping the dough cold in order to roll and cut it without adhering to the board. COOKING OF DOUGHS Doughs are steamed, baked in the oven, or on a griddle on top of the stove. Such mixtures of many differ- Cottage Pudding- Doughnuts Cookies ent ingredients are more difficult to cook than the separate substances of which they are composed, though heat affects each ingredient in combination much a.s it does singly. Sugar carmelizes and this aids in producing a golden brown color in the crust of anything AN ACCURATE OVEN THERMOMETER. Punch a hole in a common gas stove oven and insert thermometer, which will register to 600 degrees F, wrapped with asbestos and wire where it passes through the top. containing it. Since it burns readily, cakes and cookies are more liable to be scorched than unsweetened doughs. Flour browns when exposed to dry heat. Eggs cook at a low temperature. Butter melts, hence doughs containing much must contain more flour than those that have little or none. COOKING OF DOUGHS. The heat applied should conform to the way in which it affects the principal ingredients in any dough. Those containing many eggs need moderate heat, etc., etc. The size and shape of the article are also to be considered. In general, small thin portions require less time but will bear higher temperature than larger portions as with bread doughs. There are various tests for the heat of the oven. Oven thermometers are valuable aids, showing comparative if not actual degree of heat. When a thermometer is inaccessible, a piece of white paper or a teaspoonful of flour if charred from a five minutes' stay in the oven indicate too great heat and other degrees may be gauged accordingly. All parts of an oven are not equally hot and each housekeeper must study her own. The lower part of a gas oven is very hot because the full force of heat is below ; in the wood or coal range one side is usually hotter than the other because of the position of the firebox. Heat Kequired Temperature of the Oven Variety FORM AND FLAVORS